cross-legged on the living room floor on a sunny afternoon, our heads bent together over a game of Monopoly. We are about six and ten, happily engrossed, both of us smiling, he because he’s learning a “big kid” game, me because I am winning, no doubt—I almost never lost at Monopoly, no matter who I played. In the background, Caroline lies on the sofa in her pajamas. She has the chicken pox. She is clutching her big yellow teddy bear to her breast, craning her neck to try to see the game board. I remember that Caroline named the bear Hope, and we all thought it was so weird. Hope has the chicken pox too: red construction-paper dots, which Caroline carefully cut out and Scotch-taped onto him. While Steve and I sit playing the game with our backs to her, she takes what consolation she can from something she created. I remember her telling my mother that day that her throat hurt, the chicken pox were in her throat, and my mother telling her not to be ridiculous. Years later, when Hannah got chicken pox and I took her to the pediatrician, he looked in her throat and said, “Yup.”
15
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DRIVE,” I TOLD MY MOTHER. “It’s fine for you to fly. You won’t need a car here. You don’t like to drive long distances. You don’t like to drive short distances!” Silently, I added, And I am not going to come and get you and bring you here.
“But I’ll be there for a whole week,” she said. “And you’ll be working, and the kids are going to go back to school. . . . What if I want to go out somewhere? I don’t want to leave you without a car.”
“You can take it anytime. I don’t really use it that much.” I didn’t want to tell her I was going to her house the day after she arrived here.
It was a rainy Monday morning. Just before I called my mother, I spoke to Caroline and Steve, both of whom agreed to meet me at our mother’s house on Wednesday afternoon, presumably to talk about what to do with the place—Mom had always said she wouldn’t want to live there alone. Whether she still felt that way, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to ask now. Steve had been a little put out. I’d awakened him from a sound sleep, and he had been intending to go home today. But he agreed, finally, after I convinced him he might as well take care of this now instead of having to fly back later. He had also agreed to pick me up at the airport. That way I could work on him a bit before he saw Caroline.
Thunder boomed so loudly I could feel it in my chest. The rain, coming in at an angle, fell in sheets against the windows. I couldn’t believe the storm hadn’t awakened the kids. I wanted to get off the phone—I’d heard you shouldn’t use portables in such weather. I got a brief little vision of a cartoon death, a jagged bolt of lightning coming from the phone into my brain, my hair standing on end, my eyes turned spirally, and the toes of my shoes curled up. “I’ve got to go, Mom,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I hung up the phone, went over to the coffeemaker to fill my mug, and sat at the table with Pete. “Here we go.”
He looked up at me briefly and returned to the business section of the newspaper.
“I feel bad leaving when school’s just starting.”
“They’ll be fine,” Pete said. “They don’t need us anymore.”
“Yes, they do!”
“Not that way. Anyway, I’ll be here. And Maggie always helps.”
I reached for the front section of the paper, scanned the headlines. “Why don’t they ever lead with good news?”
“Because people pay more attention to bad news.”
“No, they don’t. That’s what you always say. It isn’t true!”
He put down the newspaper. “You want to fight, Laura? Do you need to fight?”
I said nothing, blinked once, twice.
“What are you so mad about?”
“I’m not.” I started reading the paper, then stopped. “I’m not. I just . . . don’t want to do this. I want to stay home and work. I’ve got work to do. A family to care for. I want to live my own life, not try to straighten out someone else’s.”
“She’s your sister!”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
He stared at me, half smiling, Are you kidding?
“Well,